expectations (Remix)

“expectations” was always one of the more overlooked tracks on you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love – a solid album cut about the gap between a relationship’s imagined version and its actual one, competent but not among the record’s standouts. The remix, which teases Chappell Roan’s arrival with an Instagram “oh Olivia does remixes now” before confirming it properly, doesn’t rewrite the song so much as hand it to someone whose whole persona is built on turning disappointment into spectacle. Roan’s verse doesn’t just add a guest feature; it reframes the entire track’s emotional register, pulling a song about quietly managed letdown into the realm of the theatrically wronged, which is exactly the register Roan’s catalog already lives in.

The producer behind both the original and the remix is Daniel Nigro, a connective thread that keeps the song’s bones intact even as its personality changes – this is Rodrigo and Roan’s first time officially in a studio together, but it doesn’t sound like two separate aesthetics stitched together so much as one song getting access to a second gear it didn’t have before. The cover art and video lean hard into a deliberately silly 1980s game-show conceit, with David Byrne hosting and both singers in Cyndi Lauper-coded outfits riding a convertible – a choice that works because it refuses to treat the collaboration as precious. Two of pop’s most emotionally exacting songwriters getting to be loud and a little dumb together is its own kind of payoff, and it reads as genuine affection between two artists more often cast as rivals-by-proximity than as actual friends.

What the remix can’t fully solve is that “expectations” was a mid-tier song to begin with, and no amount of guest chemistry changes that the hook itself is still the song’s weakest element – functional rather than genuinely catchy, built to support two voices rather than designed around one killer line. What it accomplishes instead is a different kind of success: the remix sent an 18-month-old album back to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, which is a statement about audience goodwill and event-release excitement more than about the song’s own durability. As a victory lap and a cross-promotion, it’s close to ideal. As a song judged purely on its own songwriting, it’s good work elevated by better chemistry.

7.6/10 – the collaboration is the real event here, not the song underneath it, and for one remix, that’s enough.

Hero image: “expectations (Remix)” single cover art, Geffen Records. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.